January is our no-trip month, which is how I ended up at the kitchen table on a cold Saturday with the laptop, a mug of coffee gone lukewarm and a shoebox of trip envelopes. Every trip from 2025 has its own envelope with the receipts inside, and it took most of a morning to get them all into one spreadsheet. Wes walked by twice, said "That's a lot of columns," and left me to it.
Here's what a year of cheap weekends added up to.
Twelve trips. About 5,900 miles in the CR-V. $2,968 all in, which covers gas, lodging, food, admission, parking and the small stuff. That works out to about $247 a trip, comfortably under our $300 target. Our trip account took in $250 a month all year, $3,000 total, so we came out a little ahead.
The first trip actually started on the last day of February, to Wilmington and Kure Beach, and spilled into March. I'm counting it with the rest. What I didn't count: the Outer Banks cottage that a tropical storm cancelled in September. We never went, and the $780 rent came back in full through the trip policy. The $57 policy itself sits on its own line, separate from the trips.
Every trip, cheapest to most expensive
- McAdenville Christmas lights, December: $54. A Friday drive, a $9 supper, and a lot of lights.
- Lake Norman day trip, July: $73. Gas was $41 of that. Swim beach at the state park.
- Jones Lake State Park, April: $81. A $28 tent site and Tonya's borrowed tent.
- Wilmington and Kure Beach, March: $212. Free couch at my brother Darren's.
- Pinehurst-area inn, December: $232. One night at $118. We put $186 of saved cash-back toward it.
- Myrtle Beach, April: $236. Older oceanfront motel, $79 a night plus tax.
- Carolina Beach State Park, October: $242. Campsite at $28 a night, a fish dinner and the aquarium.
- Uwharrie cabin, June: $268. $105 a night plus a $40 pet fee, because June came too.
- Charleston, August: $296. One night in North Charleston at $112 plus tax instead of $289 downtown.
- Blue Ridge Parkway, June: $322. Two motels, Boone and near Asheville.
- Savannah, September: $340. Hotel near the airport with a free shuttle.
- Great Smoky Mountains, November: $612. Wes's 45th birthday. The splurge.
What the spreadsheet told me
Lodging is the whole ballgame. Every trip under $100 had either no room at all or a tent site. Every trip over $300 had two nights in a real room. Gas, by comparison, stayed fairly steady. The CR-V gets about 31 miles to the gallon on the highway, and with regular at roughly $2.85 to $3.05 most of the year, even our longest drives rarely went past $100 in gas.
The free things were the best things. Darren's couch, the beach at Fort Fisher, Jones Lake at sunrise, the lights in McAdenville. If I had to rank trips by how much we still talk about them, the cheap ones would mostly be at the top.
Two trips broke budget, and I'm fine with both. Savannah ran $40 over because I underestimated food in a city where everything smells good. The Smokies trip was more than double our target, but it was a birthday, and we'd agreed in advance that one trip a year could be the exception.
The Smokies trip also had a cost that isn't in this spreadsheet yet. Wes came down with a sinus infection and we ended up at an urgent care in Tennessee. That bill is still bouncing around with our health plan, and I'll write it up once it settles.
Compared with 2024
In 2024 we spent about $2,900 on two week-long vacations. In 2025 we spent $2,968 on twelve weekends. Almost the same money. When I asked Wes which year he'd rather repeat, he didn't even look up from his sandwich. "The one with more fish shacks."
So we're doing it again. The trip account kept getting its $250 on the first of the month, and I'm working on a 2026 budget now. I'll share it when it's done. Meanwhile the spreadsheet has a new tab labeled 2026, completely empty, and I'm a little too excited about that.
